Wednesday, 29 September 2010

While I was impressed with both Cliff May and Mona Charen --- and I was thrilled at the chance to see them speak --- the night truly belonged to David Horowitz. During the audience question time, one attendee --- sitting in the front row a few seats to the left of me --- asked about Israel's security, that by defending the country by force didn't Israel "risk World War III?" This question really animated David Horowitz, and he came back again to the issue of political willpower. He said the it wasn't just the PA or Hamas that rejected Israel's right to resist, but the Palestinians themselves. They'd been trying to drive the Jews into the sea since the 1920s. Current efforts at "peace" were thus systematically doomed to fail since there is no support among Palestinians for the preservation of the Israeli state. Whenever Israel had made concessions to the peace process the security situation has deteriorated. What the Palestinians would understand is hard power. Israel should have "carpet bombed" Gaza after the rockets started raining down on schoolyards in Sderot after the 2005 Israeli withdrawal. Until the Israel government is willing to "crush" the Arabs militarily there will never be any movement toward lasting peace.

1 comment:

1. They did not annex Bethlehem and assume the mantle of protector of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East.

2. Israel did not expel the UNRWA from any territory under Israeli control and place the Palestinians (stateless Gazans or Jordanians) under the same legal regime as all other civilians in disputed territories around the world.

3. Israel did not take control of the education system in all territories under their control and ensure that all textbooks and curricula met acceptable international standards for both accuracy and promoting tolerance.

4. Israel did not take control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, restricting Muslim religious authorities to the operation of the mosques and appointing a Mufti, as was their right under Islamic practice, who would not permit abuse of the position.

If those four things had been done by the end of June 1967 then peace would have rapidly followed. By Israel failing to do so the Arabs became convinced that time was on their side and that there was no downside to refusing to make peace.

By the logic of Islamic Arab culture and experience the losses of 1948 and 1967 are merely a trading of Space for Time. Their model is the expulsion of the Crusades after 200 years. Their more recent experience is that of their patrons in the Soviet Union, who trained much of their current civil and military elite for two generations, who successfully repelled the Germans and then killed or deported millions of civilians.